Satays simmer with anger over ST’s use of the word ‘grilled’.
By Usad Ahdar
About 20 sticks of satay gathered at Speaker’s Corner yesterday to protest the Straits Times’ use of the word ‘grilled’ in its headlines in the past month. The main beef (with apologies to chicken and mutton) of their unhappiness appeared to be the negative association of the word with people who got into trouble with the law. Two articles in the past month featured the following headlines:
According to a spokessatay of mutton origin, comsumption of satay has declined drastically over the past one month as customers stayed away from grilled food.
“Every time people see the headlines ‘So-and-so grilled by the police’, they think, oh anything grilled must be breaking the law, so they become scared of grilled food,” the spokessatay said. “Even though we are so oily and high in chlolestrol, we never have so many people avoiding us until now.”
The spokesstay furthered claimed that the newspaper exercised selective use of the word.
“Only criminals and opposition politicians get grilled, but you never read about Ministers getting grilled in Parliament,” it said.
The spokessatay also pointed out that it was impossible to grill a person over a blog.
“It must be over a charcoal fire, that one then can be cooked, then can have the smokey chao tar tastes,” it advised.
The protest however was only attended by satays. The spokessatay claimed they had approached the grilled chicken wings to do a joint protest but the chicken wings were too… well… ‘chicken’. Kebabs and Yakitoris, of foreign origin, were not allowed by law to give a speech at Speakers’ Corner.
The event took an unusual turn after twenty minutes as police arrived and arrested the satays, despite them having registered for the protest the day before.
This reporter learnt that the satays were grilled by the police. Literally.
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If you don’t get the satire, read this for reference: “Held for ‘inciting violence’ (Straits Times.)
